WASHINGTON-Congress should sunset all telecommunications regulation including spectrum allocations and let the private sector innovate if true telecom progress is ever to occur, according to a paper released by the New Millennium Research Council.
“Congress need only sunset existing telecom regulation and declare the market open on a date certain, end the corporate welfare that skews research and development decisions, and marginalize Federal Communications Commission control over spectrum allocation,” wrote Diane Katz, director of science, environment and technology policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “The greater difficulty is summoning the political will to dismantle the machine. Thousands of bureaucrats and their allies on K Street as well as in courtrooms nationwide are heavily invested in maintaining the current system. But as America’s telecom pioneers have repeatedly taught the world, we can do whatever we imagine. It’s time for Congress to realize this vision by eliminating government barriers to telecommunications progress.”
Katz’s paper, “Dynamic Telecom Industry Bogged Down in Regulatory Obsolescence,” was included in the New Millennium’s larger document that focused on wireline price regulation. It originally appeared on the Internet in September at www.mackinac.org.
As the breakup of Ma Bell turns 20 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is heading into its ninth year, calls are starting for reforming the FCC with the goal of some of eliminating it altogether. Additionally, both the Powell FCC and the Bush administration have been focusing on spectrum policy but neither seems willing to confront the spectrum held by TV broadcasters, which is a focus of the Katz article.
“Wireless technologies widely popular in Europe and Asia are simply unavailable to millions of American consumers because the FCC and Congress refuse to release their 1950s-era chokehold on the broadcast spectrum. Notwithstanding the advent of cable and satellite, through which 90 percent of U.S. households now receive their television signals, Washington continues to hoard the spectrum as if only three networks served the nation. Limits on licenses are applied even before new technology is market tested,” writes Katz. “Spectrum and other regulatory struggles delayed cellular telephony at least a full decade, while architects of ultra-wideband applications waited even longer. Few entrepreneurs are able or willing to endure such costly obstacles. In response to pleas for reform, the FCC agreed earlier this year to appoint a task force to study spectrum allocation. This constitutes progress in government terms.”
